Urs Fischer "The Kiss" @ Sadie Coles Gallery In London

Urs Fischer’s 2017 exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ centers on a large-scale replica of Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss, cast in white Plasticine. The famous image of embracing lovers will morph and fragment over the course of the exhibition through the interventions of visitors, who will be free to remould the Plasticine at will. The image of an entwined couple also appears in a group of four new paintings, in which the artist uses classic movie stills as stock visual formulae – found images to be disrupted and redeployed. Urs Fischer "The Kiss" will be on view until March 11, 2017 at Sadie Coles in London. photographs by Mazzy-Mae Green

The Kiss At Turner

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Auguste Rodin’s life-size marble sculpture The Kiss (1901-04) will be installed at the Sunley Gallery at Turner Contemporary. On loan from the Tate collection and one of the most iconic images of sexual love, The Kiss was voted the nation’s favorite work of art in a 2003 poll. The embracing couple come from a true thirteenth century story of forbidden love, which was immortalized in Dante’s Inferno and by many artists since. The couple are the adulterous lovers Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini, who were slain by Francesca’s outraged husband. They appear in Dante’s Inferno, which describes how their passion grew as they read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere together. At the time, the perceived eroticism of Rodin’s sculpture was controversial leading to instances where the work was removed from public view.